1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system, method, and program for initializing a storage space.
2. Description of the Related Art
High end storage controllers manage Input/Output (I/O) requests from networked hosts to one or more storage devices, such as a direct access storage device (DASD), Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID Array), and Just a Bunch of Disks (JBOD). Storage controllers include one or more host bus adaptor (HBA) cards to communicate with one or more hosts over a network and adaptors to communicate with the storage devices. Many vendors of high end storage controllers provide proprietary hardware. This requires that the user purchase the vendor proprietary adaptors and other components when designing their network system.
There is a trend in the industry toward developing storage controllers that operate in an open systems environment. In one respect, this means that the storage controller can utilize and be compatible with components from other vendors and not require the proprietary hardware and software solutions previously employed.
Notwithstanding the drive in the industry for open systems, the third party vendor components may perform operations that conflict with the storage controller operations.
For these reasons, there is a need in the art to provide techniques to improve the integration of storage controllers with other system components to optimize operations in an open systems environment.
Provided is a method, system, and program for configuring an attached storage device through a storage adaptor. The storage adaptor includes an initialization routine to generate initialization data to write to the storage device when adding storage space in the storage device to a system. A request is received to add storage space to the system. A command is transmitted to the storage adaptor capable of inhibiting the storage adaptor from performing the initialization routine. Initialization data is generated for the storage space and transmitted to the storage adaptor to write to the storage space to initialize the storage space.
Additionally, the initialization data transmitted to the storage adaptor enables data integrity and error correction and recovery operations on the storage space.
In still further implementations, the initialization data is in a first format and the initialization data the storage adaptor applies when executing the initialization routine is in a second format. The storage adaptor is not capable of performing data integrity and error recovery operations when the storage space is initialized with initialization data in the first format.
In certain implementations, the requested storage space comprises a RAID rank.
Further provided is a method, system, an program for configuring an attached storage device. A requested configuration for the attached storage device and command to set a first state is received. The first state is indicated in response to the received command. A determination is made as to whether the first state or a second state is indicated. An initialization routine is executed to generate and write initialization data to the storage space to implement the requested configuration if the second state is indicated. If the first state is indicated, then initialization data is received to write to the storage space to implement the requested configuration without executing the initialization routine.
The described implementations provide a technique for initializing and configuring a storage space with a storage adaptor card including an initialization routine for performing a separate initialization of the storage space. With the described implementations, the storage adaptor is inhibited from executing its initialization routine to allow initialization data to be generated and applied from an external component, such as from a storage subsystem controller in which the storage adaptor is installed, thereby avoiding having the storage adaptor card perform a redundant initialization operation.